In my youth, western films were shown on television every year at Christmas time. The German-Serbian actor Gojko Mitić appeared tanned as an Apache, Mohican or Seminole, and Pierre Briece sacrificed himself every year as the Apache chief Winnetou for his white blood brother Old Shatterhand. Sometimes Kevin Costner or Daniel Day-Lewis also fought alongside their chosen people against the white supremacy during prime time on Christmas Day, while the snow fell outside the window. The vast land of films formed a strange contrast to the cosy atmosphere of the living room with its shimmering candles and shining Christmas tree. At the time, I wondered whether those making the programme saw a connection between the sacrifice of the festivities and the films, or whether the sun-drenched land just provided a beautiful contrast to the dreariness of winter.
When I travelled to Los Angeles for the first time in 2015, I was fortunate to meet Raul Garcia. At the time, Raul was the director of the organisation ‘American Indian Changing Spirits’, a rehabilitation centre dedicated to connecting indigenous men and women with their culture. Together with Raul, we decided to record the different life journeys and give an insight into the diversity of indigenous cultures in North America. We also wanted to make a portrait of each person we spoke to. However, the last part of the project fell through. As soon as I held the camera in my hand, its strange power to objectify the subject became a curse. The foreign became a fetish and in the end I only saw my will to photograph. How do we approach the other? The German ethnologist Heike Behrend speaks of ‘a variety of interwoven alterities (…) that refract, reflect and swirl around like in a kaleidoscope.’ But even these levels of appropriation, attributions and reflections are not enough to organise the chaos. Interspersed between them are 100 years of media history, which were a fertile breeding ground for the culture industry and now occupy the space where culture is created. The Other is also not a singular product of a self-sufficient past, but is subject to the same turmoil of globalisation and networking.
The installation ‘The Third Space’ is the result of a collaboration with Raul Garcia and ‘American Indian Changing Spirits’. The exhibition presents 16 portraits of actors printed on mirrors. Two semi-transparent, reflective panes of glass separate the titular space and confront the viewer with their own and another’s gaze, which is, after all, only their own. The recorded conversations can be heard via loudspeakers as a 6.5-hour loop.
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